Thank God, none of us had to copy Anton’s high-wire act – quite. He tied off the safety rope to a tree on the far side, so we could clip ourselves on without relying on the bridge. Our feet hardly touched it. When it was my turn, I felt like one of those Hong Kong action heroes, skimming over rooftops and walls with balletic, wire-assisted grace. That didn’t make it less terrifying. I’ve never suffered from vertigo, but looking down through a hole in the bridge at the river far below was the most terrifying thing I’d ever done. I let go my grip on the wire, dangling by the harness like a game bird. It took all my strength to pull myself back up.
And then I was there. The other side. I looked around in wonder, waiting for my legs to stop shaking, while the others took their turns crossing. I wished Cate was there, so I could show her it was all true. I’d done it.
A path led off from the bridgehead into the jungle. I stared down it, into the darkness, while I waited for Howie.
He didn’t want to come. In the end, Anton had to cross back and more or less manhandle him on to the rope. He and Fabio tied our two ropes together and made a sort of pulley, like a laundry line. He clipped Howie on and we all dragged him across. The backpacks came the same way. Anton unpacked the guns.
‘Let’s see who’s home.’
He said it lightly, but I could hear the tension. The path was clear and well trodden. We weren’t the first people here.
Anton took the lead, rolling the machete in his wrist to lop off any stray branches. Fabio went next, filming every step, then Tillman with a shotgun. Even Howie came, limping along with the walking stick Fabio cut for him. No one wanted to miss this.
The path led a little way in, then turned right, parallel with the river, into a defile between two of the hills we’d seen from the far side. The jungle rose up; parrots shrieked from the undergrowth.
‘Those hills look natural to you?’ said Anton.
Without waiting for an answer, he veered off the path, hacking his way to the base of the mound. Where the ground sloped up, he plunged the machete into the earth, like King Arthur or something. It went in about a foot and stopped, quivering.
‘Stone.’
Using the machete as a shovel, Anton chopped and scraped the soil until he’d gouged a hole about three feet wide. The blade rasped on rock. We brushed the soil away. A square-edged block emerged, black and proud in the red earth.
‘You crazy motherfucker,’ said Tillman. ‘You really did it.’
‘One stone doesn’t make a city,’ warned Drew. But the incautious light in her eyes said she’d drunk the Kool-Aid like the rest of us.
I started scooping more earth to widen the hole. But Anton was already up and off again, flitting up the path like a butterfly. All we could do was try to keep up.
How to describe that first hour in the city? Like Christmas morning, the last day of school, the birth of your child; like waking up the morning after you lost your virginity, knowing whatever else happens, no one can take that away from you. Just – awe. Walking between the mounds, dwarfed by them and the jungle that crowned them; macaws and parrots that seemed brighter than any we’d seen before; debating among ourselves what the different buildings might have been. Anton gave them fanciful names – ‘the armoury’, ‘the guard room’, ‘the priests’ quarters’ – jotting them down on a scrap of paper with a rudimentary map.
‘Like I’m going to wait for some archaeologist to tell me what they are? You name it, you own it. Bingham, Schliemann, those guys didn’t know jack about what they were digging up – just legends and guesswork. But the names stuck.’
‘Don’t you think you should at least make sure they’re buildings?’
‘There’s time for that later,’ he said. ‘Right now, I want it all.’
The path took us between two small mounds – so close together Anton called them ‘the gatehouses’ – and on to the edge of a clearing. We hung back – even Anton hesitated, reluctant to step into the open. We all felt we’d come to the heart of something, the secret centre of the city. Two squat mounds boxed the sides, while in front of us loomed the biggest of them all. A vine with blood-red flowers spread over it like a network of veins.
‘The high temple,’ said Anton, and no one contradicted him. ‘This must have been the central plaza.’
He walked out, arms spread out and blade bared. If I squinted, I could see him in armour, a battle-hardened conquistador claiming the city he’d taken. He knelt in the centre of the circle and cleared a stretch of ground with his machete. Again, the blade rang on stone.
Anton hardly cared. He looked up at the high temple in front of him.
‘Race you.’
I remembered that morning in Mexico, scrambling after Anton up the steps of the Maya pyramid. This was nothing like that – except for the sense of wonder. Here, we went on all fours, swinging our way like monkeys through a magic forest that had been tipped at a forty-five-degree angle. Trees became handholds, vines ropes for hanging on to while we hauled ourselves up the slope.
By the time we reached the top I was grimy, scratched and sore from trying to keep up with Anton. Even my scabs had scabs. Wiping the sweat off my face did nothing, because my sleeve was soaked. Then there was light and air and height around me. The foliage fell away, the slope levelled off. I scrambled out on a carpet of thickly knotted vines, so deep I couldn’t touch the earth below. In the centre, a solitary ficus tree spread its shade. I crawled into it hungrily and slurped water out of my canteen. Then I turned round.
It was like being back in the aeroplane. High above the jungle, looking down on a green ocean that had flooded the world. From here, you could see the whole layout. The city was an island, just like Alvarado said, a plateau maybe half a mile long in the middle of the river. Cut off completely, apart from the bridge, which I could see swaying far below. Downstream, the canyon disappeared round a bend.
The mounds we’d seen covered almost the whole island, like an upturned egg carton, too regular and tight packed to have ever been natural. I counted more than twenty. Easy, in the mind’s eye, to strip off the vegetation and see houses, temples, courtyards and streets. Blink again, and you could see people, proud Incas who’d come down from the mountains to the very depths of the jungle, rather than submit to the conquest.
And now we’d found them.
I took in the whole three-sixty. Behind me – west, I suppose – the mountains came down much closer than I’d expected. White mist hung on the slopes, until it merged with the clouds that hid the peaks from view.
One by one, the others came over the top and joined us under the tree. Fabio started filming. Drew picked one of the red flowers and tucked it in her hair, like Peggy does sometimes on Putney Heath. Her face shone. Anton put his arm around her waist and kissed her, until Tillman made a puking noise.
I gestured at the view. ‘When I signed up for this, I never imagined … this .’
‘Yeah.’ The moment was so far beyond words, saying anything was pointless. We drank it in.
Tillman took out his knife. He pressed the flat of the blade against his palm so it made a welt.
‘You know what we should do? Blood brothers. Seal the deal.’
‘Forget it,’ said Drew sharply. ‘God knows what’s in your blood by now.’
I nodded. ‘The last thing we need is more cuts to get infected.’
Tillman flushed; he muttered something and looked at the ground. He was embarrassed, I realised. I almost felt bad.
‘He’s right, though.’ Anton took the knife and made a small cut in his thumb. Didn’t flinch. He squeezed it until the blood dribbled out over the ground. He wiped the knife and gave it back to Tillman, who did the same, as did Fabio.
I sighed, and got out my own penknife. Before I made the cut, I rubbed antibacterial gel from the bottle in my pocket over the blade. My blood dripped between the vines underfoot, down through the gaps and on to who knows what. Flies swarmed on to it like Coca-Cola.
While Drew added her blood (Zia refused), Anton took his knife and scarred ‘A.M.’ into the bark of the lone tree. One by one, we all added our own initials. The first time I’d carved my initials in anything since I was fifteen.
‘How about Howie?’
Howie had stayed below. I looked down at the plaza, our small pile of bags in the centre. Couldn’t see him: he’d probably gone looking for shade.
‘He made it too. Stick him on there.’
From the pocket of his trousers, Anton pulled out a miniature bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum. He cracked the seal and poured it out on the ground. It dribbled down through the tangled vines.
‘I claim this city in the name of the El Dorado Exploration Expedition,’ he declared. ‘Paid for with our blood, sweat and spirit.’
‘Amen,’ said Tillman.
We huddled together the best we could on that twisted ground. Arms round each other’s shoulders, sweat to sweat, sharing the moment. Everything else that had happened – Nolberto, Menendez, Roberto, Howie’s injury, the food situation – didn’t exist. Drew, next to me, squeezed my arm and I squeezed back.
Later – a lot later – when the others had started to go down, I ended up alone at the top with Tillman. He shaded his eyes and looked east, to the far horizon.
‘You see something?’
He shook his head. ‘Just thinking – it’s a long way back from here.’
By the time we’d reached the bottom, we all remembered we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. We gathered wood and built a fire on the edge of the plaza.
‘Ham again,’ said Howie. He looked bad. Sweating badly – worse than usual, I mean – and his face sickly grey, apart from a red welt on his cheek. I wondered if his wound had got infected: I didn’t fancy having to examine it. He barely nibbled his food.
‘Better get used to the taste,’ said Zia. ‘We’ll be eating this all the way back to Puerto Tordoya.’
‘First thing I do when I get there, I’m going to order the biggest pizza they have, all the toppings, and an ice-cold beer,’ I announced.
There was a moment’s silence. The human mind’s a fickle thing. Do something, move on. An hour ago, we’d been on top of the world. Now our thoughts had already begun turning home.
‘You think they ever did human sacrifices here?’ said Tillman.
‘Inca didn’t do human sacrifice,’ said Anton. ‘That was Aztecs and Maya.’
‘Not true.’ Drew scratched a bite on her shoulder and hitched her bra strap. ‘Incas sacrificed plenty. Thousands of people, each time one of the emperors died.’
‘Thanks, Wikipedia.’
‘They’ve also found hundreds of mummified kids that look like they were killed in some kind of ritual.’
‘How about the mummies of the fourteen Inca emperors?’ said Fabio. ‘They are supposed to be here, when the Incas ran away from the Spanish.’
Tillman snorted. ‘I’d rather find the golden sun from Cuzco. And Huascar’s golden chain. It’s supposed to be a thousand feet long, each link as thick as a man’s arm.’
‘“Seek and you shall find.” Isn’t that what the Bible says?’ Anton put down his plate and tousled Howie’s hair. ‘Let’s go seek.’
We split up. Without planning: we just drifted away from the square in different directions. I think each of us needed to process the moment in our own way. Plus, after three weeks trapped in each other’s company, solitude was almost as precious as a hot shower. We felt safe on the island. Too small to get lost for long, and if any Indians had been there, we’d have found them by now (or they’d have found us).
Even so. Someone had made the path that brought us to the plaza. I kept my eyes open, and a shotgun on my shoulder.
Grey clouds had come over. The jungle steamed; it felt like walking inside a kettle. Even the insects had gone quiet. I cut a little trail between two of the smaller mounds, enjoying the silence and the easy swing of the machete in my hands. I hadn’t seen a mirror since we left the boats, but I knew I must look different. More hair, less of everything else. The paunch that had been spreading since Peggy was born had shrunk tight to my hips. My body was battered and weary, but I felt stronger than I had in years – as if all the calcified bullshit of modern life was scaling off, revealing the real me inside, shiny and new.
‘Peso d’ocho for your thoughts?’
Drew had come round the corner of one of the mounds. There weren’t any trees here, just tall grass; she moved like a cat.
I laughed. ‘I was thinking about my little brother. He’s a glaciologist, spends six months of every year in Svalbard, Greenland, places like that. You see his Facebook, it’s like scenes from a James Bond set, while I’m at home trying to arrange a babysitter. This is the first time since he was eighteen I don’t feel envious.’
‘Wait till you get home before you feel too smug.’
I remembered that vast ocean of green from the top of the temple. ‘True.’
She grabbed my hand. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
She led me through the grass, back the way she’d come. Into a small open space between four squat mounds. She waved her hand in an arc around the perimeter.
‘Look at the plant cover.’
Even I could see the difference: the scrub in the middle was totally different, lower and browner, perfectly round like a crop circle.
‘This place is incredible,’ she said. ‘So many secrets below the surface, waiting to be dug up. There must be a fountain under here, or maybe a ceremonial platform. They found one like it in Templo Mayor, in Mexico, a few years ago.’
She squatted by the circle and started pulling up plants by the roots, probing the dirt with her knife. I sat on the hot ground and watched her. The cut on my thumb throbbed.
‘You think Zia’s OK?’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘Even if Menendez survived this long, finding him would be a million to one.’
‘So was finding Paititi.’
I pondered that, and a few other things, while the sweat ran down my face and Drew dug in the soil with her knife. I looked up at the sky. A black speck hovered in front of the cloud, bug-sized at this distance.
‘Condor?’ I guessed.
Drew followed my gaze. ‘Too far from the mountains. Maybe a hawk.’
I stared. From this distance, it could have been anything. But the way it moved wasn’t right. Too perfect, almost – artificial .
‘I met a man in Puerto Tordoya. He said American drones patrol this area.’
Drew nodded. ‘Against the narcos . Makes sense.’
I wished it would go away. I hated the thought of being watched, the outside world intruding on our discovery already. Was some twenty-year-old kid in Nevada going to tell the world we’d found Paititi, beat us to the punchline?
Or perhaps I imagined it. When I blinked, the speck had vanished in the clouds.
Suddenly, Drew let out a little ‘oof’ of discovery.
‘Look at this.’
She worked her knife into the ground and levered out a clod of red earth. Working with her fingers, she rubbed the soil away. Shapes emerged: black, stubby legs; a long neck; a pointed ear. So detailed, you could see the cloven hoofs.
Drew gave it a squirt from her water bottle. The last smears of earth washed away, and it lay naked in her hand. She held it out to me, like a child offering a toy.
‘You know what this means?’
‘It’s a llama,’ I said. One leg and one ear missing, a crack along its belly. Otherwise, not so different from the souvenirs I’d seen at Lima airport.
Our faces were inches apart. She stared at me, eyes wild and shining.
‘There aren’t any llamas in the Amazon. It means the Incas were here. It proves everything .’
I stared at the figurine: about the size of Peggy’s My Little Pony dolls. It seemed an awful lot of weight to put on its tiny, broken back.
The sunlight fell on Drew’s face and made her skin glow. ‘We have to tell Anton.’
I didn’t want to share this with Anton. I didn’t want to share her with anyone.
I closed my eyes, leaned in and kissed her.
Her lips were warm and salty. God, it had been so long. The moment I tasted her, I wanted more. I pushed forward, spreading her back on the ground. I rubbed against her. Loneliness and isolation flooded out of me; I was drunk in a golden daze.
Drew pushed my shoulders back. Obediently, I rolled over. She sat up.
I met her eyes, wanting to seal the moment. The look on her face stopped me dead.
‘We can’t,’ she whispered.
‘I love you.’
Such a simple phrase: I use it all the time. A sign-off on phone calls and texts, or when I come in from work when Cate’s heading out to Pilates and we pass in the hall. Just a convention, a verbal tic. Here it sounded fierce and raw, the way it’s meant to sound. The way, when you’re sixteen, you think it’ll sound for ever.
I tried to kiss her again. Clumsily – she ducked away. She pushed me back, gently but firmly. ‘You’re an amazing person, Kel. Don’t think I haven’t thought … that I don’t want … But this isn’t the right time.’
I knew I should stop there, before I made myself look a fool. I couldn’t.
‘Nobody has to know.’
‘You know that’s not true.’ She ran her fingers through her hair, combing out grass and leaves.
‘Is it Anton?’
She shook her head. ‘Not how you think. But this is his day. I’m not going to break his heart.’
Jealous thoughts crowded my head. That she wanted to be the one photographed on Anton’s arm when National Geographic broke this. That she’d led me on, teasing me with her youth just for the kick of it. Did she think I was too old? Anton and I were the same age, for Christ’s sake.
I know that probably sounds pathetic to you now. Jungle fever spiced with midlife crisis. Maybe you’re thinking I should have spared a thought for Cate.
A gunshot broke the silence like the wrath of God. Caught in the act. The llama spilled out of my hands; my head snapped up. I expected to see Anton there, brandishing his gun. What the hell was I thinking?
There was no one there. The shot had come from further away, back towards the plaza.
‘Let me go first.’
I dusted myself off and ran back to the main plaza. The others had already arrived. They didn’t look too concerned, though Tillman had his shotgun ready. I straightened up and sauntered across; Drew followed a few moments later from the other side of the mound.
‘Was that you shooting off?’ Tillman called to me.
‘I thought it was you.’
‘Where’s Anton?’
Bang on cue, Anton came out from the left-hand side of the square. He was running, which was unusual, his front absolutely covered in mud.
‘You find something?’
‘Grab those shovels,’ he ordered us. ‘And bring the camera.’
Drew took a triangular archaeologist’s trowel from her pack. Tillman grabbed the two short shovels we used for latrines, and Fabio got the camera. We followed Anton back the way he’d come, along a path that skirted round the base of the temple, to a smaller mound behind it. Better defined than the others: I could see stone under the creepers that shrouded it. Halfway along, a mound of stones and red earth stood piled up against the base.
‘I just followed the path,’ Anton was saying. ‘Then I found this. Help me out.’
He and Tillman lifted one of the stones off the pile and laid it on the ground. We knelt around it. The edge had been chiselled square; on the front, another one of the heart-headed figures stared out at us.
‘That’s proof,’ said Drew. ‘Not like we needed it, but – my God .’ She turned to Fabio, who had the camera. ‘Can you get it with this light?’
‘You’re missing the point.’ Anton had turned back to the spoil heap and was pulling out rocks, tossing them back into the jungle. ‘No way that earth fell here.’
I understood. ‘Somebody dug that out and piled it up here.’
‘Who?’
‘Question is: why?’
Anton grabbed one of the spades and attacked the pile. Tillman joined him. They unearthed more heavy blocks, salted in the mix like plums in a pudding. They pried them out, and Fabio and I dragged them away.
No one spoke. No one had to. As the mound shrank, we could all begin to see what was behind it.
Nothing. Black space, framed between stone posts that emerged as the heap went down. A doorway.
‘Run back and get the flashlights,’ Anton told Zia.
I don’t think any of us underestimated what we’d found since we crossed the bridge. But this was a whole new level.
Zia returned with the head-torches – and Howie, limping on his stick. By now, the pile had come down to knee level. Anton threw down his spade and grabbed a head-torch. He shone it inside.
We all stared in.
‘Paydirt,’ whispered Anton.
‘Shit just got real,’ said Tillman.
‘Don’t move those flashlights,’ Anton ordered. ‘I don’t want this to disappear.’
‘It’s not going anywhere,’ I promised.
From the gloom within, a group of human skeletons stared back at us.
The torch shone into a stone chamber, not much bigger than my living room. It looked intact. Unlike the skeletons, which had collapsed into a ragbag pile so you couldn’t be sure which bone went with which.
‘Are there fourteen?’ The torch beam wobbled. Even Anton couldn’t help trembling.
‘Fuck you,’ said Tillman incredulously.
‘Count them.’
‘The legend says we’re looking for the mummies of the Inca emperors,’ Drew cautioned. ‘Those are just skeletons.’
‘Let’s take a closer look.’ Tillman stepped forward. Drew put out her arm, blocking his way.
‘We’re not going in.’
‘Come back when it’s light,’ reasoned Fabio. The dark sky had got darker. Somewhere beyond the mountains, the sun was setting.
‘I’m not afraid of King Tut’s ghost,’ said Tillman.
‘No one goes in until we’ve done a proper survey.’
She looked at Anton, in a way that made my heart twist in my chest. ‘This is the find of the century. Don’t you want to do it right?’
Anton nodded slowly, like a man coming out of a dream. ‘Yeah.’
‘Are you fucking kidding?’ said Tillman. ‘I thought we came for the treasure. To get rich. Huascar’s golden chain could be six inches under that dirt.’
‘We’re going to do this right,’ Anton repeated. ‘This isn’t digging up bullets on Omaha beach for tourists. If we go back and tell the world we fucked up the site, our names’ll be mud in every textbook till the end of time. Don’t you want to be a hero, for once?’
‘I’d rather be rich.’
‘Come on,’ said Fabio. ‘Too dark now, anyway. We need to make camp.’ He took Tillman’s arms and tried to steer him away, like a bouncer escorting a drunk to the door. Tillman shook him off.
‘Get the fuck off of me.’
‘Children!’ said Drew.
I stepped into the space Tillman had left to get a closer look. A foul smell breezed out and made me gag. Something had died in there more recently than five hundred years ago. I covered my nose with my shirt collar and shone my torch around the chamber.
More stones and small piles of earth lay on the floor, radiating out from the doorway. I didn’t think we’d done that. Some animal must have been trapped inside, frantically trying to burrow out. I wondered if it had found a way – or if that explained the smell.
I aimed the torch further back towards the skeletons. I counted the skulls. Hard to see from the doorway, and in that condition. But:
‘Didn’t you say fourteen Inca mummies?’
Anton spun round. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I only count eight.’
‘I assume some could have fallen over, gotten buried in the dirt.’
‘Never assume,’ said Tillman. ‘It makes an asshole out of you and me.’
Anton hefted both spades and jammed them into the earth in the doorway. He angled them so their handles crossed.
‘We’ll come back in the morning.’
‘What’s the greatest thing you’ve ever done?’
The fire crackled; sparks and smoke spun into the air. I could feel the city all around me, pressing in from the darkness. I knew what Anton wanted me to say.
‘This.’
‘Yeah?’
I didn’t dare look at Drew. Everything had happened so fast, I was in danger of losing my grip. I felt guilty and embarrassed, and at the same time I wanted her more than ever. The memory of that kiss played over in my head like some kind of torture.
‘Truly. This is the greatest moment of my life.’
‘Not the birth of your daughter?’
‘I might have another child. But this …’ I waved my hand at the darkness. ‘This is one of a kind.’
I licked my fingers. Fabio had shot an agouti, a jungle rodent like an overgrown rat. Not something I’d have touched back home; here I gnawed every ounce of meat off its tiny ribs.
Anton smiled. ‘True that.’
‘Remember that time me and you went to that riverboat casino?’ said Tillman.
‘Natchez.’ Anton savoured the word like a connoisseur swilling his favourite wine.
‘We ran the table. Everything we touched turned to gold – sevens every throw. I kept saying to quit while we were ahead, and you always said—’
‘“One more throw.”’
‘We went home next morning ten thousand dollars richer.’
‘Yeah.’ Anton leaned back and stared up at the stars. ‘And the next week we blew it all on that gold-mine tip in Arizona.’
‘This is like that. But better.’
The memory had brought a funny expression to Tillman’s face. I think it might have been happiness.
Anton laughed. ‘Listen to us. We sound like a pair of fags.’
I threw another log on the fire. ‘So what next?’
‘We’ll stay a while, take a look around.’
‘How about food?’ said Howie.
‘We’ve got the pigs. All you can eat.’
We looked at Zia. She’d said nothing until then – no doubt thinking about Menendez.
‘We left the pigs on the other side of the ravine,’ she said.
Anton’s gaze dropped off the stars. ‘I told you to bring them.’
‘You didn’t.’
No missing the edge in her voice, the way I speak to Peggy when she claims she can’t find her loom bands. Anton didn’t like it either.
‘You’re the fucking cook. You look after the food.’
‘We go back and get them tomorrow,’ said Fabio calmly. Letting the pressure out of the situation, as usual. ‘Plenty of food, plenty of time.’
‘Plenty of time?’ repeated Howie. He lay flat on his back, close to the fire, eyes closed and groaning every few minutes. Something had taken hold of him: his temperature was up, and he had a red rash spreading over his arms and face. Antihistamine cream hadn’t helped. He hadn’t moved all evening. ‘How long we staying here?’
‘When Columbus landed in Cuba, did he head home next morning?’ said Anton. ‘We need to make a full survey. See if we can open up any of the other buildings. And clear one off – one of the small ones. It’ll look a million dollars in the pictures.’
‘What about the mummies?’ I said.
Anton fiddled with the shark’s-tooth necklace. I’d never seen him so reticent – almost as if he was frightened of something in the treasure house.
‘I guess you know about doctoring, but you’ve got a lot to learn about this business. You don’t sell people on what you found. You sell them on the hope. If we show people what we found so far, I can talk them into funding us to keep coming back another ten years.’
‘Paititi is real,’ said Drew. ‘No one can take that away from you. The mummies are just the icing on the cake.’
‘They’ll put up a statue of you in Puerto Tordoya,’ I said.
‘If you’re worried about keeping the site intact, I can do a quick survey, very low-impact,’ said Drew. ‘We’ve got tools, we’ve got the cameras, we’ll document everything. Take one level off the ground, just to see what’s there.’
‘She’s right, boss,’ said Tillman. ‘If those are the mummies, then that’s got to be the treasure house. You know what else might be there? Because I’ve got some ideas. You’re gonna tell the world you found the Lost City of Gold, it’ll look good to have some actual gold to show.’
‘Plus, we can take a bone sample from one of the skeletons to run a DNA check when we get home,’ I pointed out. ‘Analyse it for traces of Inca ancestry.’
Anton put a finger in his mouth and mimed throwing up. ‘You know, I stopped watching cop shows when they invented DNA. All that CSI crap. I like the old-timers, guys who use their intuition.’
Drew gave him a level stare. ‘You’re going back to the world to announce that your intuition says you’ve found the fourteen Inca emperors? You don’t know how big this is going to be.’
‘Trust me, I know.’ He looked around the fire, fixing his eyes on a patch of darkness between me and Fabio. Knowing he was beaten. Not really wanting to win.
At last I understood. Anton was a dreamer. He’d wade through swamps and jungles, clamber across that rope bridge, all without a second thought, because he believed in the dream. And now he’d got here, he didn’t know what to do with it.
He turned to me. ‘What do you think?’
I laughed. ‘I came here to find some treasure.’
A noise woke me in the night. I’d been dreaming, and as soon as I woke I couldn’t tell if the noise had spilled out of the dream, or intruded from reality. I lay under my net, tense and listening. In the jungle, that’s a recipe for madness.
A white light glowed through the bushes, near where the path from the bridge came out. Too bright for the moon. I fumbled for the knife on my belt and got up.
I crept towards the bushes. Across the plaza, the moon shone behind the top of the temple pyramid. I stepped on a branch that snapped underfoot. The light stopped. Turned.
‘It’s Kel,’ I called.
Fabio stepped out of the bushes. I breathed again.
‘Can’t sleep?’
He jerked his thumb down the path. ‘Checking the bridge. I keep dreaming how easy it would be for someone to cut the rope.’
I looked around the campsite. Five sagging hammocks, all present and correct. All around, the ruined buildings loomed vast in the night sky.
‘Do you think one day New York and London will look like this?’
Fabio laughed softly. ‘You feel it too? The fear?’
‘I’m a long way out of my comfort zone.’
He picked at his teeth. ‘You know how the Indians go fishing? The fish, they like still water, so the Indians build a dam, make a pool where the fish can come, swim around. Then, very quiet, the Indians come down to the edge and pour in poison. Not so much to kill; the fish don’t even know it. They drink it through their gills, and then suddenly they float to the surface and the Indians can pick them up with their bare hands.’
‘Clever.’ I wondered why he was telling me that.
‘This place is poison. We don’t taste it, but the longer time we stay here, the more it gets inside us. And one day we’ll wake up and find we can’t get out.’
Whatever nightmares haunted that city, we woke next morning to clear skies. The only clouds were far on the horizon, the white mist climbing up the face of the mountains.
‘Doesn’t that ever shift?’ I wondered.
‘Transpiration,’ said Fabio. ‘That’s a billion trees all breathing out.’
Some things were fine that morning, and some things were worse. Howie’s temperature hadn’t come down; his rash had started to blister, and his eyes were bloodshot. I changed the dressing and pretended everything was normal, best bedside manner. In fact, my medical kit was so low I didn’t know how long I could even offer him clean bandages. I hadn’t expected to need so much.
It was a bright hot day – but the light didn’t reach inside the treasure house (as Tillman had optimistically christened it). We stood on the mound of trampled red earth by the entrance, watching the skeletons watching us. Et in arcadia ego . Doctors don’t suffer many illusions: we know humans are meat, gifted a short span before the bolt between the eyes. I confront that every day. Even so, I avoided looking too closely.
I’d brought a couple of paper surgical masks in the first-aid kit, which Drew and I put on. I told the others it was to prevent contamination of the site, which sounded scientific. Truth is, the smell was so bad nobody could have worked in there without protection.
Drew took the lead. I followed as her designated assistant. Fabio waited just inside the door with the video camera, recording everything. Flies swarmed in the cones of light that our torches cut through the gloom. I felt like a deep-sea diver entering a wreck.
The other three (not Howie: he was still unwell) crowded around the door. Anton flapped them back with his free hand. ‘You’re blocking the light.’
Drew unravelled a tape measure. We stretched it between us from the door to the far wall of the cave, every step like treading through a minefield. Called the measurement back to Anton, then measured again, a metre away, then another, until we’d marked a grid covering the whole room. I tried to stop myself looking at Drew; when we swapped tools, I cringed in case I touched her. Having Anton watching was worse than the skeletons.
The whole process took nearly three-quarters of an hour.
‘Archaeology goes a whole lot faster in the movies,’ Tillman said from the door. Zia had already drifted off. Even Anton looked bored.
‘We said we wanted to do this right,’ Drew reminded them, sketching the grid in her notebook. She labelled each box like the squares on a chessboard, A1, A2 and so on. The skeletons were mostly in the back left corner, with a few in the back right. Eight in all. Some had shreds of cloth hanging off the bones, but not even Anton could have dressed that up as a mummy.
Rats scuttled around the edge of the room, always one step ahead of the light. Flies buzzed and drove me mad. Sweat soaked my mask so it nearly smothered me, but if I took it off I knew I’d gag on the smell.
‘It’s all a bit Scooby Doo ,’ I said, trying to lift the atmosphere, but nobody laughed. I glanced at Drew’s notebook and saw she’d written the date. Friday, 13 June (I’d completely lost track). Six hours ahead of us, Cate would be bringing Peggy home from school and making tea. Perhaps they’d curl up together on the sofa with popcorn and watch a video, a girls’ night in.
I closed my eyes and shook my head to dislodge the thought. I didn’t want to bring Peggy into that place.
‘There’s your smell.’
Drew’s torch shone on a dead bat lying on the ground. Between its loose wings, I could see tiny ribs where its stomach had been eviscerated. I took a photo, for thoroughness, then scooped it up with a spade and disposed of it under a bush outside. Anton paced about like an anxious father who can’t stand the delivery room.
‘Nothing yet,’ I told him.
We worked all morning, beginning at square A1 and working our way along the grid. Drew insisted. I wondered if that was best practice, or if she was just delaying the moment of truth with the skeletons. She squatted on the ground, scraping back minuscule layers of earth with her trowel. I held the bucket, and watched for anything coming out of the ground.
Fabio put the camera on a rock and left it running. ‘I come back in an hour to change the memory card.’
We were alone. Outside, even Anton had given up. The only sound was the buzz of the flies, and the squelch of Drew’s trowel stabbing moist earth. I looked at the skulls, and thought of the cave in Mexico. The reason I was here.
‘We really must stop meeting like this,’ I said. So awkward. I tried to pull myself together. Not like you slept with her , I rationalised. Sweat poured off me by the gallon. Drew didn’t seem to notice.
The trowel scraped something. A different sound from the stones she’d hit before. I picked up the camera and aimed it at the floor, while Drew dug out the find with small, delicate flicks of her trowel. Soon, she’d exposed a clay figurine about ten centimetres high, simply made, with a long face painted with black accents. Lying spreadeagled on the floor, it reminded me of the poor bat.
‘Is that Inca?’
‘Too crude. Could be pre-Inca, which would be interesting. Possibly Tiwanaku, which would be very interesting, historically speaking.’
She tipped it into a ziplock bag and put it in my hand. It looked like a child’s toy.
‘Or it could be from any time in the last ten thousand years – up to and including last week. Without carbon dating, no way to tell.’
We worked all morning. The whole time, I could feel the skeletons waiting for us like a final exam. When we eventually reached that grid square, it almost came as a relief. Drew started removing the soil around them, while I filmed the bones in close-up.
‘They seem quite pale,’ I noted for the camera. ‘I’d expect bones that old to be browner.’
‘Maybe something to do with the mummification process.’
‘Maybe. Didn’t do anything for their dentistry.’
All the skeletons were missing teeth. They must have fallen out post-mortem: I could see a few glinting on the ground, like spilled food. I videoed them all.
‘How about those marks on the bones?’ All the arms and legs were badly scarred, strange red marks etched into the bone like acid. ‘Is that normal?’
‘You tell me, Doctor.’
I got a plastic bag. Using the tip of my knife, I dug out three small pieces of finger bone and tipped them in. Sealed it up. We could take it to the lab when we got back, and maybe find out something about when these people had lived – and how they’d died.
Drew had something. She poked the tip of her trowel into the ground, probing the contours. Leaned forward and brushed the soil aside with gloved fingers.
‘Oh my God.’
A bright spot had appeared in the earth. Smooth metal, reflecting our torches back at us with the serene perfection of something rich and valuable. The colour of dreams. The reason we’d come.
Gold.
I swung the camera around and aimed it at the spot, zooming right in. The gold flickered in the viewfinder, grainy in the dim light.
‘We should get Anton,’ I said. But I didn’t move. Drew’s trowel flicked and smoothed the earth like an artist’s paintbrush. More gold appeared, rectangular panels joined by wire into a loop.
‘Some kind of bracelet?’ I guessed.
A noise at the door almost made my heart stop. Fabio ducked his head in, holding a bandana over his nose.
‘Zia says lunch is ready.’
I didn’t answer. Now Drew’s trowel had cleared the earth around the find, I could see it for what it was. I didn’t need a handbook of Inca archaeology to explain it.
‘Switch off the camera,’ said Drew.
Fabio took a couple of steps closer. ‘Is that—?’
‘Switch off the camera,’ she said again.
It was a watch. A gold slip-on band, gold hands scissored on a white dial. So out of place, I don’t know how long I stared at it before I realised the hands were moving. I checked my own watch instinctively, and realised it said the same. Buried in the mud, the gold watch had been keeping perfect time, ticking by the hours long after its owner had stopped.
How long?
I grabbed the watch and stumbled out of the cave. I needed Anton – and I didn’t have to look far. Everyone had gathered outside the treasure house, even Howie, watching the door from a safe distance. As if they’d known.
I ripped off my face mask and swallowed fresh air. I held up the watch, like a priest showing the entrails. Some of them only saw gold – they whooped and clapped. Others saw it for what it was.
The scream was loud enough to wake the whole city from the dead. Everybody forgot the watch and stared at Zia.
Her screams tailed off into sobs, each one as if her soul was being ripped out of her. I was aware of voices crowding the clearing, everyone wanting to know everything at once. Zia could hardly breathe, let alone speak.
She didn’t have to. The truth was obvious in every choking sob.
We’d found Menendez.
‘But how did they get … like that ?’ Drew lowered her voice, her eyes darting towards Zia, who sat by the campfire wrapped in a sleeping bag. Her eyes looked as if they’d been drilled out and filled with wax.
‘The biggest factor that speeds decomposition is heat,’ I said. ‘It must have been close to forty degrees in there, and so humid. Plus …’ I trailed off, in deference to Zia. In my mind’s eye, all I could see were swarming flies, and rats scurrying from the light.
Howie sat bolt upright. ‘You think that agouti we ate last night could’ve—’
‘Shut up,’ said Drew.
‘I mean, that would be like cannibalism.’ Howie looked properly horrified. I wanted to punch him. Though I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. All the meat on those tiny ribs.
Zia didn’t flinch. I’d given her a couple of pills to calm her down. Erred on the generous side.
‘We should give them a proper burial,’ said Drew.
‘We should get the heck out of Dodge,’ said Howie. ‘Were you guys not paying attention? Someone already buried them. Probably the same folks who killed them.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Fabio.
Howie’s bloodshot eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘You don’t think the Indians killed them? They looked pretty dead to me.’
‘All the rocks they piled up. Why so many, if Menendez was dead already? And the earth we found inside. It was not rats trying to dig themselves out.’
He lowered his voice, as if that would make anything better. ‘It was Menendez.’
‘Buried alive,’ said Howie, borderline hysterical. ‘This gets better and better.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Tillman, ‘is if they were alive when they went in, why they didn’t fight their way out? I mean, eight of them, and the only thing blocking the door was dirt and stones. If your life depended on it, you’d pull that down with your bare hands. It’s like they just gave up.’
‘Maybe the Indians were guarding it.’
‘There were blood-marks on the bones,’ I said. ‘Consistent with some sort of illness. They’d been in the jungle God knows how long, maybe held captive for weeks. They were probably in a pretty bad way.’
‘We need to get out of here right now,’ said Drew. ‘If those Indians come back, there’ll be seven more skeletons for the next explorers to find.’
Tillman patted his shotgun. ‘Let them try.’
‘Menendez and his men had guns.’ I glanced at Zia for confirmation. A sluggish nod. ‘Didn’t help them.’
‘What if we put a guard on the cliff with a rifle. Our side. Anyone comes within ten feet of the bridge, we pop a cap in his ass.’
I couldn’t believe Tillman was serious. ‘And who’s the sniper? You?’
‘Better believe it.’
‘I bet you’re a real ace at Call of Duty .’ I turned to Anton. ‘This is a survival situation—’
‘It’s been a survival situation since Pedro and Pablo checked out,’ said Tillman.
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t want to get trapped on an island waiting for a bunch of homicidal Indians to show up?’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ shouted Anton. ‘I can’t hear myself think.’
He twisted his shark’s tooth on its cord.
‘Way I figure it is this. The Indians captured Menendez and his men. Locked them in that cave near the village for a while, but it wasn’t strong enough. Roberto escaped. So they brought them here. They probably used the city already as some kind of religious centre.’
‘If Menendez was sick, perhaps they thought the gods would cure them or something,’ said Drew.
‘Maybe. Didn’t work.’
‘We haven’t seen any Indians,’ Tillman pointed out.
‘But maybe they see us,’ said Fabio. ‘And now they got us right where they want us.’ I remembered his story about the fish traps. Fish don’t even feel the poison.
‘Please,’ I begged Anton. ‘Think of my child. Think of yours.’
Anton looked around at the city. Those clear blue eyes might have wanted to cry. He’d found everything he ever wanted, and now it was being ripped away.
‘Kel’s right.’
We packed up the camp as fast as we could. We should have had it down to an art, by then, but we’d been sloppy, relieved to think we’d be there a few days. It’s amazing how much stuff you cling to, even when you’re carrying it yourself through the jungle.
‘These?’ Fabio indicated the artefacts we’d found. As well as the clay figurine from the treasure house, we had a stone axe, two sharp pieces of palm wood that Drew said were arrowheads, and the llama she and I had found. Not forgetting Menendez’s watch.
‘Take them,’ said Tillman. ‘They’ll be worth something in Puerto Tordoya.’
‘I said no looting,’ said Anton.
‘The way this is going, we’ll need whatever we can get when we’re back there.’
Tillman stuffed them in his pack. Fabio doused the fire. I looked at the smoke trailing into the blue sky, and wondered who else could see it. No sign of the drone from yesterday. Today, I’d have been glad of the company, the promise that somewhere civilisation was watching over us.
The sun had dropped well past noon, but nobody thought about lunch. I took a last look around the plaza, trying to remember every detail. In an hour, I knew, it would seem impossible I’d ever been here.
‘Wait,’ said Anton. ‘We forgot one thing.’
He made us go back into the middle of the plaza. Even Howie. We lined up in front of the temple, arms awkwardly around each other’s shoulders, while Anton balanced the camera on top of his pack. A red light counted down the timer as he ran back and squeezed in between us.
‘Say “Paititi”.’
‘Paititi,’ we chorused. Fabio made a peace sign. Tillman flipped the bird.
‘Now let’s get out of here.’
We hiked back between the silent mounds, lost in our thoughts. Zia looked as if she’d sit down and cry if we let her; Drew had to take her hand and lead her like a toddler. Howie needed two of us just to keep him upright. For the first and only time on that entire expedition, Anton brought up the rear. I think that slowed us more than anything. Like monkeys in a tribe, we relied on him to give us our lead.
At last the path turned, and I saw light and space. I hurried ahead: I felt a sort of dread, as if the island’s evil gravity would pull me back if I didn’t run fast enough.
I came out on the bluffs and stopped. Everything was as I remembered it: the red cliffs and the silver river below; the rocks on the opposite side, and the cleft we’d squeezed through that day we shot the pigs. The stump where we’d tied the safety rope, and the rock eyelets that had held the bridge. All present and correct.
Except for one thing.
We weren’t going anywhere.
We lined up on the clifftop and stared down, like mourners at the graveside. No hope of resurrection. Even Howie crawled over, peering over the cliff on his belly.
The bridge hung down the opposite cliff and spread across the bottom of the ravine. It straddled the river like a weir, ruffling the water behind it. As I watched, the current wrestled one of the planks free from the vines and carried it away. One less ripple to disturb the river.
Howie said what we were all thinking. ‘How did this happen?’
Fabio kicked the stone rings. The bridge hawsers were still tied through them, trailing off after a couple of feet where they’d broken.
‘Frayed on the cliff edge?’
‘Both the hawsers at once? And how do you explain the safety rope?’
Anton pointed straight down. So tight, I had to lean way out to spot it, painfully aware that one nudge or jostle would tip me off. Did I trust the people behind me? All of them?
The rope we’d strung across the gorge lay in a heap at the foot of the cliff.
‘Maybe it got tangled when the bridge fell?’
‘That rope’s rated a thousand kilos. No way the bridge could have dragged it down. I tied it off myself.’
‘Indians,’ said Fabio. ‘They got us on the island, then they cut the bridge. We walked right into their trap.’
Silence. I took a step back from the cliff. Around me, the others shuffled back too. Only Howie stayed where he was, staring like a man who’s just dropped his keys down the drain.
‘How are we gonna get off?’
Anton picked up the dead rope still tied to the stone ring. A few stray fibres tickled out from the end, but otherwise it was a clean break.
‘That’s not our biggest problem.’
He was one step ahead – as usual. You could see the pennies dropping as each of us spun round and stared into the bushes behind us. Tillman chambered a round; Fabio brandished his machete.
‘Whoever did this, they must still be on the island.’
Tillman wanted to search the city and, as he put it, ‘String that motherfucker up by his balls.’ Anton nixed it.
‘No way we’d keep sight of each other. We’d get separated, they could pick us off one by one.’
Drew raised an eyebrow. ‘They?’
‘Who says there’s only one?’
‘Bad,’ moaned Howie. ‘Really, really bad.’
He was in shock. We all were. Zia hadn’t said a word, Tillman hadn’t stopped swearing, and Fabio’s thumb was bleeding from pressing it against his machete. Never mind the Indians. Never mind the bridge, or the hundreds of miles of jungle all around us. I doubted our group could hold together twenty-four hours. And if we didn’t …
Anton looked at me as if he’d read my mind. ‘You seem pretty cool.’
‘Detachment comes with the job.’
‘Good. We’ll need that.’
Drew looked down, then across the ravine at the rocks on the far side. She shivered. ‘Let’s get away from here. We’re too exposed.’
We retreated a little way, behind the first of the buildings. On Anton’s sketch map, he’d labelled it the watchtower.
‘We’ll make camp here,’ said Anton. ‘Clear the jungle to make a perimeter. Cut a path up to the top of the watchtower, too, so we can use it as a lookout point.’
‘What about water?’ said Drew.
‘I’m going down to the river to check out the bridge. I’ll fetch some.’
‘Going down to the river? ’ I repeated. ‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’ He grinned at me – as if he was enjoying this, thriving on the drama. The possibility we might not make it out alive didn’t seem to have crossed his mind. ‘And you’re coming too.’
Tillman and Fabio started laying into the brush with their machetes. Tillman, in particular, looked as if he’d do someone an injury, hacking and slashing like a pissed-off Viking. I wouldn’t want to get in his way.
‘Zia, stay here with Howie. Drew, grab a gun.’
‘I’ve never fired a gun in my life.’
‘But the Indians don’t know that.’ He tossed her his rifle. She only just caught it, bending double with the weight. ‘Point the round end at them.’
Anton pulled an armful of climbing gear out of his pack and headed back to the cliff. I grabbed our water bottles and followed.
We rappelled down into the ravine. Loose rock came away every time my feet touched the crumbling cliffs; with my back to the river, I felt horribly exposed. And it was our last rope. If it broke – or was cut – there was no way back.
I landed on the riverbank and unclipped myself. The river flowed close to the cliffs on that side, leaving only a narrow rim of boulders to balance on.
Anton had come down first. He’d found the safety rope where it had fallen in a hollow between the boulders. He swore.
‘Won’t be using this again.’
He picked up two lengths, each not much more than a couple of metres. More lay tangled at his feet. It hadn’t just been severed: it had been cut into pieces, so many that if you tied them all together you’d have more knots than rope.
‘They knew what they were doing.’
Anton dropped the useless rope. We waded out a little way into the river and examined the bridge. There wasn’t much to see. The fall had smashed it, and the river had done the rest. Not more than a dozen planks survived.
‘Still keeping cool?’
I gave a weak smile. ‘As much as I can, marooned on an island in the jungle with no way out, and some homicidal Indians for company.’ I didn’t mention I’d also popped a Valium. Professional detachment only takes you so far. ‘I’m amazed how calm you’re keeping.’
Anton shrugged. ‘Truth is, I was afraid something like this might happen.’
Even the Valium didn’t get me ready for that. ‘You what ?’
‘I’ve read about this kind of thing. Big find, pressure situation. Some people don’t want to share the glory.’
‘You think it could have been …?’ I lowered my voice and nodded up to the clifftop. ‘One of them ?’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me.’ And he thought I was detached. ‘We haven’t seen one trace of the Indians since we came up the Pachacamac.’
‘But why would one of them … one of us … I mean, we’re all stuck on the island together.’
‘So you don’t suspect him, right? But I guarantee you he has an escape plan.’
‘He? ’ I tried to keep my voice level. ‘Is there someone … in particular …?’
‘The bridge was A-OK this morning. I checked it after breakfast. That means it must have been cut while you and Drew were in the treasure house. Howie can’t hardly move. That gives you Tillman, Fabio and Zia.’
‘You know Tillman. You’ve worked with him before.’
‘Yeah,’ said Anton slowly. ‘But never where we found something like this. Guys change when they see an opportunity. You can see it happening already.’
I thought of how Tillman had shortchanged Anton when we bought the guns from Lorenzo. The stupid risk he’d taken for five hundred dollars. What would he do for a thousand times that much?
‘Fabio?’
‘There were a few things I heard.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Nothing concrete. Some guys in Puerto told me I shouldn’t take him, couple of stories about jobs that ended badly. One time, they said, he walked out and left some people stranded. Another time, an Indian tribe ran him out of town because they said he stole something from them. But …’ He shrugged. ‘I thought any guy tough enough to make it out here, he’s going to piss some people off along the line. Maybe I should have paid more attention.’
‘That leaves Zia.’
‘Yeah.’ One word, heavy with meaning.
‘Did you see any of them? Where they were, while Drew and I were excavating?’
‘We were all kind of wandering about.’
‘Should we confront them?’
Anton shook his head. ‘We’ll let this play out a while. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’
I scooped up a handful of river water and tipped it over my face. ‘Doesn’t that scare you?’
‘What scares me is thinking that all this …’ – he swept his arm in an expansive three-sixty – ‘… that we might not get to show it to the world.’
‘What scares me,’ I said truthfully, ‘is thinking I might never see my daughter again.’
Anton reached behind his head and fumbled with the leather cord that held his shark’s tooth. He undid the knot and handed it to me.
‘Take it. It’s my lucky charm.’
The leather was slick with his sweat, but I tied it around my neck and felt absurdly grateful. ‘What about you?’
‘I make my own luck.’ He grinned, and looked up at the cliff. ‘Let’s give it a go.’
He might make his own luck, but on the far side of the river even Anton couldn’t make climbing screws stick in that cliff. It crumbled like plaster at the least touch; the cams pulled out as fast as he could jam them in.
‘You made it up at the waterfall,’ I said hopefully, after he’d slid down for about the tenth time.
‘It’s a different kind of rock.’ Anton took a long swig from his water bottle. Sweat and dust made a warpaint stripe across his forehead. ‘Flaky as hell.’
He put his weight on one of the bridge hawsers, dangling down the cliff. A few of the planks had survived the collapse: perpendicular, they made a sort of Jacob’s ladder up the cliff face.
‘Could you use that?’
I’d seen it done – by Indiana Jones. The moment Anton touched the lowest plank, it pulled loose and almost fell on our heads. He tried hauling himself up the vine rope, hand over hand, but the dry fibres came away in clumps until the rope was barely as thick as a pencil. He slid down before it snapped.
Eventually, even Anton had to admit reality. ‘We’re not getting out this way.’
We abandoned the attempt, and made the long climb back up the other side to the city.
At the watchtower, Tillman and Fabio had cleared a swathe of jungle around the pyramid. They’d stacked the brush around the perimeter, making a rough stockade. Tillman’s stars-and-stripes bandana fluttered from a sapling he’d erected on the top of the pyramid. Zia had got the fire going.
I poured the water bottle I’d filled into a pot, and waited for it to boil. Fabio had found some wild potatoes, which we cooked on the coals. Zia doled out slivers of dried pork, not much thicker than bacon.
‘Is that all we get?’ complained Tillman. ‘Clearing jungle’s hungry work.’
Zia didn’t bother to reply. We all knew the answer.
‘We can always eat bugs,’ said Fabio, slapping his face. The mosquito left a bloody smear across his cheek.
‘I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t plan on being here too long,’ said Anton.
‘And how’s that work? We’re gonna stitch our ponchos together, make a hot-air balloon and just float off into the sunset?’
‘Swing across the river on vines, like Tarzan?’ suggested Fabio.
Anton toyed with his knife, spinning its point in the earth.
‘There is another possibility.’
‘No way,’ said Tillman.
‘We knew it might be an option. That’s why we carried the pack rafts all this way.’
I was a few steps behind. ‘The river?’
‘Alvarado said it was impassable,’ said Drew. ‘That’s why he hiked cross-country to the Pachacamac.’
Fabio drew a pattern in the ground. ‘Why not? You think we can survive the jungle? Ten days, no GPS? Howie can’t even walk. In the boats, four or five days, a week for sure, we find a village.’
‘And we’re just going to float down like a church school picnic?’ Tillman snorted. ‘You ever think there might be a reason why no one ever explored up the top of this river?’
‘“The Indians do not navigate it, for they say it will crush any vessel like a serpent,”’ said Drew. ‘That’s what Alvarado said.’
Tillman looked at Howie. ‘You think you’re good to hike back all the way we came?’
Howie groaned and stared at the fire. ‘Just get me out of here.’
Anton jumped up. ‘It’s too late to decide anything now. We’ll sleep on it, and see how we feel in the morning.’
‘You’re going to sleep?’ said Drew.
‘We’ll keep watch. Two by two, so nobody falls asleep. Or runs off.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Howie promised.
‘You get the night off. Me and Zia first. Then Kel and Fabio. Drew and Tillman last. Two hours apiece.’
He’d kept Tillman, Fabio and Zia apart, I noticed. No escaping the line he’d drawn through our group: I wondered if the others spotted it. I wondered who was supposed to be watching whom.
I wondered how long before we fell apart completely.
You’re going to sleep? Drew had said. Of course not. I was in survival mode, every sense running at the redline. I lay in my hammock, rifle in reach, and listened to the night. Each time I closed my eyes, it was like twisting up the volume knob the way Peggy does if she gets her hands on the stereo. And in case my imagination ever flagged, I always had the image of those skeletons in the cave to remind me how I might end up.
Worst of all, I wasn’t listening to the distant jungle the way I had all those other nights. I didn’t have to wonder what might be sniffing around in the undergrowth. The danger was a whole lot closer.
I dozed, and I dreamed, and I wondered, and afterwards I couldn’t be sure which was which. I fell asleep with my knife in my hand, and nearly stabbed Anton when he came to wake me up.
‘Keep cool,’ he told me.
‘Anything happening?’
‘Nada.’ Moonlight turned his hair grey and cast deep shadows around his eyes. He looked tired.
‘Zia OK?’
He knew what I meant. ‘No problem.’
I picked up the rifle and climbed to the top of the watchtower. Fabio was already there. A cigarette glowed in his mouth.
‘I thought you smoked your last one days ago.’
‘I found it in the bottom of my bag.’ He offered me a puff and I didn’t hesitate. Not much danger of getting addicted. With nothing in my stomach, the nicotine hit me like heroin.
‘Do I get a blindfold as well?’
Fabio grimaced. ‘At least the firing squad would be a quick death.’
I liked Fabio. I liked his no-drama persona, the quiet confidence he brought to the group. Our ballast. I didn’t like to think he might have cut the bridge.
I swept my arm over the moonlit city. A lost city, bathed in moonlight, and the jungle pressing all around it: the most insanely romantic thing I’ve seen in my life. And all I wanted was for it to go away.
‘You think we’re going to be rich? If we get out of here, I mean?’
He shrugged. ‘No gold.’
‘But we found the city. People have got rich for doing less.’
‘Famous, maybe.’
‘These days, if you’re famous you can be rich. Even if you’re just famous for being an ugly cat.’
Fabio didn’t get that, and I didn’t try to explain.
Something rustled in the trees. I scanned them with my torch. A pair of orange eyes jumped out of the darkness, glowing angrily. I yelped and grabbed the rifle.
Fabio’s hand pushed the barrel down. I heard a flutter, and the beat of heavy wings as a dark shape flew over us.
‘Spectacle owl,’ said Fabio.
I let my pulse come back to resting. I saw Fabio squinting at his gun, concentrating on something.
‘You know Tenzig?’
I shook my head.
‘The first man who climbed Mount Everest. The man who carries his bags is called Tenzig.’
‘Oh, right. Sherpa Tenzing.’
‘Sí . But in the books, all they say is that the white man climbed Everest. When we go home, do you think the newspapers will write that Anton and Kel and Fabio and four others discovered Paititi? Or will they say it was only Anton?’
‘Does that bug you?’
He finished the cigarette and flicked it down into the jungle. ‘Without him, none of us are here.’
We lapsed into silence, and the darkness of our thoughts.
‘Where’s Anton?’
I opened my eyes and saw Drew’s face, cloudy through the plastic sheet spread over my hammock. Wild ideas sprang into my mind; I wondered if I was dreaming. Then I saw Tillman, a few paces back, sniffing the air and cradling a shotgun. There was rain in the air: the world was grey and still. The stars-and-stripes bandana hung limp from its flagpole.
‘Where’s Anton?’ Drew said again.
‘He got me for my shift.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘Isn’t he here?’
‘His hammock’s empty.’
‘Maybe he went for a piss.’
‘We’ve waited ten minutes already. He wouldn’t have been gone that long. Not with the Indians out there.’
I rolled out of my hammock and grabbed the rifle. Strange how quickly it had become a compulsion.
‘You know what Anton’s like. He probably wanted to explore the temple one more time.’
But I was already moving in the opposite direction. I knew where Anton must have gone. Call it a hunch, or instinct, or just having lived in his pocket for three weeks. If there was an obstacle to be overcome, he didn’t sit back and stroke his chin, or try coming at it from a different angle. He battered it until it gave.
A small pile of webbing and carabiners lay in the clearing by the ravine. Anton’s rifle leaned against a tree, his hat hooked over the muzzle. Our good climbing rope ran from the stone ring and over the cliff.
‘Anton,’ Drew called. Hysterical echoes repeated it back from the red cliffs.
‘Boss?’
We were all hanging back from the cliff. Like animals, feeling the storm before the first rumble of thunder. I got down on my hands and knees, crawled to the edge and peered down. An ant wandered over my finger. I shook it off, getting a stab of pleasure watching it fall into the abyss.
Then I saw Anton. A long way down – but even from that distance, I knew it could only be him. A broken heap on the rocks, arms flung out and neck bent at an unnatural angle.
Drew and Tillman joined me on the edge. Drew sobbed; Tillman grabbed a fistful of earth and threw it angrily down the cliff.
‘You stupid asshole,’ he hissed. ‘Now we’re really fucked.’
We held it together long enough to bury Anton. Tillman and I went down into the ravine and hauled him up, wrapped him in his hammock like an old-time sailor, and carried him to the top of the temple mound. We hacked a hole in the roots and vines, and laid him with his head towards the sunrise. I wanted to put his driver’s licence in the grave, in case anyone ever found him, but when I checked in his pocket his wallet was gone.
Afterwards, we stood in a circle around the grave, holding hands. The rain got heavier, soaking our clothes and running down our necks.
‘Anyone want to say something?’ said Drew.
No one rushed to fill the silence.
Drew clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Anton used to say, you make your own adventures in life. And he did it better than anyone I knew. The world’s more boring without him.’
‘He died doing what he wanted,’ said Fabio. He gestured to the city around us, the squat mounds poking through the trees and clouds. ‘For him, this was heaven.’
Silence. Rain pattered on the ground and dripped through the branches. It soaked the corpse in its makeshift shroud, so that the outlines of Anton’s body started pressing through the fabric. As if he was trying to escape.
Tillman coughed and hawked a gob of phlegm.
‘I’m not … I don’t …’ He balled his fists and started again. ‘Anton was like a brother to me. All the bad times in my life, the dumb shit I did, Anton was there to pull me out. And now we’re on our own.’ He trailed off. He looked as if he wanted to cry, or hit someone.
Suddenly, he leaned forward and shouted into the grave. ‘I can’t believe you’re gone, you crazy motherfucker.’
Drew tried to put her arm around him, but he shook her off. Rain had dribbled into his eyes, and he rubbed it away angrily, in case we thought he was crying. The rest of us stared at the ground. Zia crossed herself and mumbled something I couldn’t catch.
‘Anyone else?’
I touched the shark’s tooth around my neck, but I didn’t say anything. There were times, in Anton’s company, when he’d felt like the best friend I’d ever had. Now he was in his grave, I didn’t feel like I’d known him at all.
Howie started to say a prayer, but Tillman stopped him with a murderous look.
‘Not a fucking word, God-Boy.’
We covered Anton with brush, stones and earth. Hard work. Thorns on the branches tore our skin; the earth turned to mud and caked our hands. The wet vines were slick underfoot: Drew slipped, and would have fallen into the grave if I hadn’t grabbed her arm in time. I pulled her towards me and she fell, awkwardly, against my chest. She didn’t move straight away. It appalled me how much I enjoyed the feeling.
We threw in enough to cover the body and then, by some unspoken agreement, called it a day. In the jungle, there’s never enough soil to bury a body deep enough.
As we clambered down, I realised that in all the burying, nobody had asked the most obvious question of all.
Did he fall, or was he pushed?
After the funeral, the arguments began. Too wet to light a fire, we huddled under the trees in our ponchos and tried to work out how to stay alive.
‘Inflate the rafts,’ said Fabio. ‘It’s the only choice.’
‘If you want to choose suicide,’ said Tillman.
‘It’s what Anton wanted.’
Nobody disputed that. Nobody was crass enough to point out that what Anton thought didn’t matter a damn now he was dead.
‘Is there any other option?’ I said.
‘Back the way we came. Through the jungle.’
‘I hate to tell you this,’ said Howie, ‘but the bridge is out.’
‘There has to be some place downriver where the cliffs end. Scramble out, and follow the compass cross-country.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘What about him?’ Fabio pointed to Howie. ‘No way we get him out through the jungle.’
‘Can we not talk about me like I’m not here?’ pleaded Howie.
Drew glared at Tillman. ‘Maybe if you didn’t have five kilos of cocaine in your pack, you could help carry Howie.’
Tillman squatted on his haunches, leaning on his machete. He stared at his reflection in a puddle, then looked around.
‘Let me tell you a few things. I’m the only guy thinking ahead here. However we go, even if we get out OK, it won’t be worth a damn if we don’t have something to show for it. We come out of the jungle empty-handed, we might as well not have tried.’
Drew shook her head in disgust. ‘You’re still worried about getting rich ?’
‘Rich? ’ Tillman rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t have a clue. This is about survival.’
‘Of course. Cocaine comes in every survival kit.’
‘Shut up! ’ I held up my hands. ‘Shut up for a second. Is there something we need to know?’
Tillman had gone red in the face.
‘Here’s the deal,’ he said. ‘Remember Anton told you about Aguas Verdes?’
‘The old mine you found.’
‘Right. Well, that was bullshit. Aguas Verdes isn’t an Indian gold mine. It’s a casino, outside of Cuzco. We went there, Anton and me, a couple of months back with five thousand dollars he borrowed from Lorenzo. He thought he could play it up into enough cash to fund the expedition. Instead, he lost it. This kid hanging around the tables, he comes up and says he knows a guy who can help him out. I said no, but the kid kept bugging us and Anton was desperate. Could see the whole Paititi expedition falling apart. So the kid takes us outside to an old Indian guy, who advances Anton another five. Just to win back what he’s lost, right?’
I could see where this was going.
‘Ten hours later, Anton’s into him for eighty thousand. Plus the five he still owes Lorenzo. Then the Indian’s buddies show up with machetes and knives, shouting at us, explaining what happens if we don’t pay.’
He rocked back, staring at the ground.
‘We had to go back to Lorenzo on our knees and beg for an advance to pay back the Indians, before they started feeding our dicks into our mouths. What we’ve done these last three weeks, Paititi, everything – it’s all bought on credit. And when we get back, they’re gonna make us pay.’
The jungle had gone quiet, apart from the drip-drip of rain from the leaves.
‘But Anton’s dead,’ I said at last.
‘Don’t you get it? They don’t let you off for that. They go for the next in line. That’s all of us – me, Drew, Howie and you.’ He jabbed a finger at me. ‘You especially. Lorenzo’s met you, he knows who you are. Rich gringo, family to think of. He can make you pay.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I’m telling you how it’s going to be. And why we need every last cent we can get out of this place.’
‘We have to get ourselves out first,’ said Drew. ‘We can deal with Lorenzo when we’re back in Puerto.’
The conversation had come full circle. ‘So how do we get there?’
Tillman wiped a trail of water off his blade. ‘We don’t.’
‘We don’t?’ I repeated.
‘Let’s get real. No way all of us can make it through the jungle. Not with the food we have, and him.’ He pointed his machete at Howie. ‘Our only shot is if one of us goes alone. Travel light, double-time it to the Pachacamac and back to civilisation. The rest sit tight here and wait for the cavalry.’
‘And who’s going to go?’ said Fabio. ‘You?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Maybe you don’t come back.’
‘Are you accusing me of something?’
Fabio smirked at him.
‘I just levelled with you. You’re saying you can’t trust me?’
‘No.’
‘Then fuck you too.’ Tillman jumped up and walked away, kicking spurts of water off the puddles.
‘Stay,’ I said, and what I lacked in authority, I made up with desperation. ‘We need you. You too,’ I said to Fabio. ‘If we’re going to get out of here alive, the only way we’ll do it is sticking together.’
Tillman stopped. Rain danced off the brim of his hat.
‘Going alone is too risky,’ I said. ‘There’s a hundred ways you could die in the forest, and the rest of us would never know. How long would we wait? Three weeks? A month? Two months? By the time we gave up, we’d be two months weaker and hungrier.’
‘And the Indians,’ said Howie. ‘They’d have gotten us for sure by then, same way they got Anton.’
‘Either we all go, or no one goes.’
‘Kel’s right.’ Drew backed me up. ‘We stick together, or we die alone.’
Tillman glared at her. ‘Who died and made you God?’
‘We take a vote.’
‘You don’t take votes in a survival situation. You follow the leader.’
‘The leader’s dead,’ I said. Deliberately brutal. We were still acting as if Anton would come along and settle the debate. We needed to grow up.
‘I’m the guide,’ sulked Fabio.
‘That’s right, asshole. You take us where we want to go.’
Before Fabio could retort, I said quickly, ‘Where we want to go. All of us, collectively.’
I stared around the group. ‘River or jungle? What’s the choice?’
‘You know what I think,’ said Tillman. ‘The devil you know, all that shit.’
‘River,’ said Fabio.
‘River,’ said Drew.
I turned to Zia. She wouldn’t meet my eye. I grabbed her arm and squeezed until she gasped with pain. ‘Look at me. Look at me. You need to be part of this. No passengers.’
‘We don’t know where the river goes, and we don’t have enough food for the forest. I say let Tillman go fetch help.’
‘That’s not an option.’
‘We can fish in the river,’ said Fabio.
‘We can hunt in the forest,’ retorted Tillman.
Zia stared at her knees. ‘Forest.’
‘There’s Indians in the forest,’ said Howie. ‘I say let’s get on that river. The sooner the better.’
Tillman didn’t move. ‘Three–two, Doc. What’s it gonna be?’
I hesitated.
‘You frightened to commit yourself? No passengers, remember?’
I stared him down, determined not to let him intimidate me.
‘The river,’ I said. I saw the look Tillman gave me and returned it with a chill smile. ‘It’s what Anton would have wanted.’
We inflated the rafts at the top of the cliff. All through the jungle we’d cursed the extra weight; now, they were a godsend.
‘Are they really going to fit all of us?’ said Howie, sitting doubled over on his pack under a tree.
‘They have to,’ I said. In fact, I’d forgotten how small they looked. The tag said they were rated for two people, or one person with baggage.
‘Everyone empty out their bags,’ I said. ‘We’re taking the absolute minimum.’
‘Food, guns, flashlights and ponchos,’ said Fabio. ‘Sleeping bags. Mosquito nets. No more.’
‘And the medical kit,’ I said.
The others didn’t even have the strength to complain. I watched carefully as our stuff spilled out, looking for the telltale yellow of my emergency beacon. I remembered Anton’s hypothesis. Whoever cut the bridge, I guarantee he has an escape plan .
Whoever it was, he (or she) was smart enough to keep it hidden. Soon, we’d made a pile of khaki clothing, hammocks, sodden paper and ripstop nylon. We left the backpacks, and repacked what we were taking in the dry-bags we’d used as liners.
‘Did we really carry all that?’ I wondered, looking at what we were leaving behind.
‘I read a book, once, about the John Franklin expedition that went missing in the Arctic,’ said Drew. ‘Their ships got trapped in the ice, so they set off on foot for rescue. Never seen again. All anyone found was the crap they left when they died. Silk handkerchiefs, writing desks, silver spoons. And they were man-hauling that every day across pack ice.’
‘Is that the one where they ended up eating their boots?’
Drew lowered her voice so the others couldn’t hear. ‘They ended up eating each other.’
‘Boats are ready,’ called Tillman. He pulled up the climbing rope and tied a raft on the end so we could lower it to the river.
‘Make sure you tie them up good,’ said Howie.
‘Yeah,’ said Fabio heavily. ‘We have shitty luck with ropes.’
Something in the way he said it made me look at him. He caught me and stared back.
I looked around at the others. Realised everyone was doing the same, checking each other out, like the pirates and the redskins and the animals and the Lost Boys stalking each other around Neverland.
Nobody was buying the Indian story. We knew it was one of us.
We lowered the boats, Howie, the gear and finally ourselves. With all of us in, the boats sank so low they grazed the river bed. Rather than risk a puncture, we got out and walked them downstream to where the second branch joined. The rubber floor sagged; even on the flat stretch, water slopped over the hull. I doubted we’d last five minutes in the first rapids.
Fabio took the lead boat, paddling solo with Howie. Tillman and Zia followed, then me and Drew at the rear. I crabbed a few strokes with the paddle, trying not to whack Drew in front of me. The current tugged us on.
‘We’re on our way home,’ I said. No one cheered.
I looked back, but by then the city had disappeared into the mist.